Hello and welcome to the History of Japan podcast, episode 436, Fist of the Buddhas, Part 1.

One of the fun things about teaching Japanese history in a Western context is that often your

students have a very strong preconceived mental image of many of the key terms before they

even set foot in a classroom. Words like samurai or geisha bring up some very specific expectations before a student even

enters the room, and a lot of what you spend your time on in intro courses, at least in my

experience, is helping students see past that baggage.

I know this was certainly true of me when I started taking

serious courses on Japanese history. Thing was, early on, there was one preconceived image I didn't

spend that much time confronting. Only relatively recently have I started to seriously think about it,

actually. In part, that's because of my specialty in modern Japanese history,

a time when the group in question was already a part of the remote past.

But even if they were long gone by the modern era,

the image of the Solhe, or warrior monk, is still a powerful one.

I'm fairly certain, at least, that the first time I heard this term, I was about 13.

I'd just picked up a true classic of my video gaming childhood, a little old piece of software

known as Shogun Total War. I suspect at least some of this podcast's listenership is thanks

to that game and its sequel, actually.

Anywho, that game, which was all about playing general during the age of warring states in the 1500s,

had a unit called the Warrior Monk, which was described in the game's own glossary

as combining, quote, religious certainty with, quote, samurai training

to produce, quote, brave and fanatical warriors. Which was very confusing for my middle school

level understanding of Buddhism, I thought they were all pacifist vegetarians, but it sounded very

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